Fire and Gold
by Zach Payne
Summary: "Your boyfriend's dead. Thought you should know." What impact do these words have on the life of Isabelle Lightwood?


_You were my sky,_  
_my moon and my stars and my ocean._  
_We can never go back to before._  
_We can never go back to before._

"Back to Before" from Ragtime

Most days, she was content to work at the forges. It was not a dull life, shaping the metal of Heaven into arms, armor, and steles, but it was quiet, and full of contemplation. She'd had twenty years to contemplate, and had spent a disproportionate amount of those two score years focusing on one day. One moment. Seven words.

"Your boyfriend's dead. Thought you should know."

Sebastian had delivered the words, with a tone of pleasantness and delight. She remembered the fire that had filled her; the rage, the anger, the adrenaline. All of those had been a part of the Shadowhunter life. The fear, she was less familiar with. The aftertaste of panic that clung to the back of her tongue, as she had raced through the streets of Idris, screaming his name.

"Simon! Simon!"

Her screaming had done her no good. He was small on the pavement in front of the Accords Hall, with the other dead. His ending, though, had been particularly more brutal than the others surrounding him. His chest had been torn open, and his heart had been ripped out. His entire chest was a bloody, disgusting mess. And standing over him, was the killer. It wasn't Sebastian; of this particular sin alone, was he blameless. It was a small, pale boy; a cross around his neck, licking his hands clean of blood.

Many Downworlders had been invited to Alicante to deal with Sebastian's threat; no doubt Raphael Santiago had been among them. But when he had spotted his chance to attack Simon, removed of his 'curse' by the Angel, he had taken it.

And in that moment, Isabelle Lightwood forswore every oath she had ever made in the Angel's name, cursed God above, and all of the Archangels of Heaven, and abandoned all reason. Wielding her great whip, she beat the vampire into submission. Once he was chained in the public square, she continued, lash after furious lash. Nobody could stop her. Not her brothers, who begged her to stop; nor her mother, who yelled at her; nor her newly-bonded Parabatai, who wept over Simon's body. She did not stop until the sun rose, taking the vampire with its first light. And then she collapsed, not saying a single word.

It was three days before Isabelle woke again. Nobody liked to speak of the weeks that followed; indeed, she wasn't sure how much they knew of those weeks. She hid in her room, wielding her weapons against her own skin, wishing she had the courage to end her life.

She had loved. She had gone with her heart. She had abandoned every semblance of sanity, of self-protection, of the walls the kept her together. She had loved that scrawny mundane boy, who hadn't been a scrawny mundane anymore, and her love had brought his death. Or so she was convinced.

She thought nobody noticed. She thought she had been clever enough with the iratzes. She thought she had been perfectly clear when she screamed at everybody, from Alec, Jace, her mother, and Clary, to Luke, Jocelyn, and the new Inquisitor, to leave her alone. Most were sufficiently cowed. But Dolores was not. The Iron Sisters were not wont to leave their Adamant Citadel, but she was persistent, a silent beacon of white, with fire in her eyes, in a room, in a life, that was otherwise filled with darkness.

After a month of isolation, she left her room with Dolores, saying nothing to her family or friends as she went; taking nothing with her. And that was the last time Isabelle Lightwood was ever seen. At the Citadel, she left that skin behind; in good time, she became Aerith.

She could hear Simon's laughter at that. Isabelle had known very little of pop culture, of video games and anime; and Sister Aerith knew even less. But the name rubbed at her, the memory of watching Simon play his games, of the pixelated girl impaled from on high as she'd knelt at an altar. She had knelt for years, bending her knee to the Angel. And now, this sword blossomed through her chest, causing an exquisite agony every time she dared to think.

"Don't think." Sister Dolores's command was simple, and yet so foolish. How could she not think? And so, she began to fill her mind with metal, building arms and shields, and armor; learning runes of protection, of defense and death, of Heaven's purity and Heaven's wrath, made incarnate in the adamas she wrought.

And as the years passed, her fingers lengthened, and her eyes burned brighter, and she tried – and failed – to forget.

Most days, Sister Aerith was content to work the forges. Today was not one of those days. It had been twenty years, twenty years to the day, and life had not stopped.

It was not often that she left the Citadel, wrapped in glamours so she wouldn't draw the attention of the mundanes. Indeed, she did not have to travel very far in the mortal world to reach her destination.

She could have insisted on a portal straight into the New York Institute, but she relished the opportunity to savor the outside world, to listen to the noises of her childhood and teenage years. The entire city was full of memories, exquisite memories that were laced with pain. She thought of stopping at Taki's Diner, for the sake of old times, but she passed. She was never hungry anymore, never thirsty, either.

She entered the institute unnoticed, except by Church, who was still prowling the halls. She knelt down to rub at his belly, before following him into the lift. It was the same old lift, and it clanked slowly upward.

Outside the lift doors, somebody was waiting.

"Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in." The girl was fourteen this year, and for the first time, she looked grown up. She wore a long white dress, embroidered with gold flowers at the hem, and with a very cleavage-friendly cut. She wore knee-high boots, with weapons visibly poking out. There were bracelets adorning her wrists, or so they would appear to the uninformed eye. Her hair was long and silky, fiercely and unashamedly red.

"Hello, Isabelle Lightwood." The girl's voice was sarcastic and biting, with an attitude that hadn't been present last year. She'd have to remember that the girl was growing up now.

"You should not call me that, Isabelle Herondale." She smiled, her lips morphing her face into a grotesque smile. "I am, rightfully, Sister Aerith. You know this."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." The girl started moving down the hall. "Come on, mom and dad are in the library, Uncle Alec and Aunt Magnus, too."

Her smile grew, as she followed the girl into the hall. For a few hours today, she would leave aside her forge and her tools. For a little while, all would be well.

**I wrote this on a whim in about an hour, so forgive me for any mistakes, or anything that doesn't seem right. If anyone wants to expand on this, go ahead!**


End file.
